


homecoming

by remux



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2018-11-13 19:03:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11191425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remux/pseuds/remux
Summary: Boys like Lance carried the stars in their eyes and the sea between their ribs.





	1. part one.

**Author's Note:**

> i just really........ love this boy ok

Boys like Lance belonged to things like the sacred space where a mother’s neck met her shoulder. They belonged to the ugly snorting laughter of a sister, belonged to the old wooden planks and carpet and nails and creaking and memories that held a family home together, belonged to the patient hands of a father that died far too young. Boys like him belonged to the feeling of bare feet running over grass and burning hot, hot, hot over asphalt; belonged to a night spent catching fireflies by the Don Quixote watchtower and getting eaten by mosquitos; belonged to the twinkling of a grandmother’s eyes that always seemed just a few seconds away from revealing one or two secrets of the universe.

They belonged to people and places and relics and details of all kinds, to memories and hopes and regrets that seeped into every corner of the earth, just waiting to be remembered. They belonged to an island, to the rustling of palm leaves in the wind, to the seasons of storms.

But most of all, boys like Lance belonged to the sea.

 

*******

 

“Seventy-one percent of Earth is covered in water,” Allura said one day as they were all standing around the bridge. They’d just won a battle against the Galra by the skin of their teeth, and though they’d managed to make it back in one piece, the castle itself still needed a few good days of repair before being ready to stand its ground against another attack. As such, Allura was trying to find them a planet to lick their wounds on, and it seemed she had enough to choose from this time that she was actually letting the paladins decide. “This one’s percentage is of ninety-two. It should have a similar landscape to that of your shores, I believe.”

Lance saw Pidge turn towards him out of the corner of his eye and told himself not to tense under their knowing gaze.

“Lance grew up by the ocean,” they offered, though it sounded a little like a question.

The others all turned to look at him. Lance dragged a smile out from somewhere deep within his belly, felt it catch against his insides and draw blood. It was too big, too thin, too fake on his lips, but he’d perfected the art of pretending a long, long time ago.

“Sounds good to me," he said.

 

*******

 

Lance’s first kiss happened on the beach after covering a long shift for his brother at one of the hundreds of hotels that sprouted from the peninsula like weeds. Her name had been Claudia and she’d tasted like cherry chapstick, and a week later she was gone, back to England or Germany or whatever corner of Europe her grandparents had emigrated to a few lifetimes ago.

He didn’t think about her much anymore, but his lips tingled every time he walked the shore at night.

 

*******

 

The first three nights he slept in his bunk at the Garrison, Lance could not fall asleep due to his shimmering excitement.

The next three nights he blamed on his new friend Hunk’s snoring despite the fact that Jaime and Samuel had always been twice as loud.

The next three nights he blamed on his unfamiliar mattress despite the dozens of embarrassing pictures his mother had that proved he could fall asleep anywhere, in any position.

The following night, he closed his eyes and allowed himself to miss the distant crashing of the waves like a person.

 

*******

 

It was all wrong.

The blue looked nearly purple under the orange glare of the sun, the trees were too foreign, and he could see the cratered surface of a red moon across the horizon. There were five pairs of eyes on him, though, and Allura looked hopeful, so he refused to let the cracks show.

“It’s just like home,” he lied.

“The colours are off,” Pidge said, “but it almost looks like this one beach in British Columbia.”

“When did you ever go to _British Columbia_?” Hunk asked, incredulous.

“What _is_ British Columbia?” Allura added.

“Just another chunk of land the British had absolutely no business claiming as theirs,” Shiro said.

“Nice landscape, though,” Pidge shrugged.

Allura frowned. “And these people claimed it? Was it empty territory?”

Hunk sighed. “Oh, Princess. If only.”

Lance left them to it to lie down under the shade of a tree a few meters away, throwing an arm over his eyes for good measure. He didn’t particularly feel like explaining centuries of barbarism to a genocide survivor who was entirely relying on four and a half members of a species that often seemed addicted to war, nor did he want to look at the amethyst-coloured ocean, so he decided to just stay there until enough time had passed that he could go back to the castle without raising suspicion.

Or so had been the plan until someone walked up to him and kicked sand at his shins.

“Why aren’t you swimming?”

Lance moved his arm away from his face and squinted up at Keith, caught somewhere between annoyance and confusion. “What?”

“I figured you’d, like, run straight into the water or something,” he shrugged. “You’re just... lying there.”

“Dude,” said Lance. “We have, like, _no_ idea what’s lurking in that water.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “Don’t you have sharks in Cuba?”

For some reason, hearing the name out loud, so clear and unexpected, made Lance freeze. He saw Keith narrow his eyes and open his mouth to point it out, no doubt, but Lance beat him to it. “We have sharks, yes, not giant tentacled monsters and homicidal mermaids.”

“You don’t know that,” Keith replied immediately. “Only five percent of our oceans have been explored.”

Lance groaned. “Shut up. I’m already done with this conversation.”

“Fine,” Keith shrugged. Then he started stripping.

Lance’s eyes became very wide. “ _Dude_. What are you doing?”

Keith threw his black shirt onto the sand and a smirk over his shoulder. “Winning,” he enunciated clearly, then ran straight into the purple water.

Lance gaped at his back. “It’s not a competition if I refuse to participate, you _knob!”_

“Buddy,” Hunk called from where Lance had left the other four talking, “I love you but your comeback game is getting real weak.”

Lance huffed in indignation and stood up. “I’m not taking any more of this… this _persecution_ ,” he said haughtily before turning his back on them and walking towards castle. It would pass as yet another one of his dramatic, Lance-being-Lance antics, but the relief he felt as he put distance between himself and the shore demanded no faking. The crashing of the waves followed him all the way back like a mockery.

He didn’t leave the castle again for the rest of their stay, and no one asked why.

 

*******

 

Lance had been wearing a watch when their whole journey started.

It wasn’t his father’s or his grandfather’s, nor was it a birthday gift or anything even remotely close to holding any emotional value. It was a cheap, ugly thing made of bright red plastic that he’d gotten at the mall while waiting for his sister outside the public restrooms. It was unimportant, utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of things, but it worked.

Doing the math had been fairly simple. Ticks lasted roughly a second and a half, and from that he could measure minutes and hours and days. He was nowhere near as savvy with technology as Pidge was, but he knew how to work Altean holograms by now and built himself a nice little calendar out of them. He hadn’t told the others about it, out of something like a desire to protect them from the visceral melancholy he felt whenever a date held any sort of meaning to him.

Like today. February fifth.

Lance had never tricked himself into believing he had a tragic backstory. Tragic was what had happened to Pidge, to Shiro, to Allura, to Coran. He wasn’t quite sure what Keith’s deal was other than the Galra thing, but everything about the other boy screamed _I have one angsty fucking past_.

A dead father meant nothing in comparison. He was under no illusion that his grief was more important than theirs, so he kept it quiet. He trained, he listened, he participated in strategic discussions. He put up a front, and if today took a little more out of him than usual, well, it wasn’t like anyone noticed.

He’d thought everyone to be in bed by then, but when Lance walked onto the bridge at what he liked to think was ass o’clock in the morning even in space, Allura’s bright hair immediately caught his eye. He almost doubled back to give her some privacy, but when she turned to look at him at the sliding sound of the doors, all she did was offer a smile and nod him over.

He gingerly sat on the steps at her side, very unsure what to do with himself, and waited.

“How are you feeling, Lance?” She asked, voice so gentle he nearly froze under her searching eyes.

“I’m- I’m fine,” he stammered. “How, um. How are you?”

“I’m well,” she said, sounding like she meant it. “The team noticed you were a bit withdrawn today. Is everything alright?”

Now Lance did freeze a little. “Yes,” he replied, trying for lighthearted and missing it by a mile. “Everything’s alright.”

She didn’t say anything, choosing instead to just look at him patiently until he cracked. It reminded him of his grandmother and he suddenly remembered he had no idea how old their princess truly was. There were moments when she acted every bit the teenage girl she looked like, and others where her soul seemed as ancient as the suns they traveled by. He remembered how she’d lost everything she ever held dear and he remembered the fight, fear and loss that always seemed to linger in her the blue of her eyes.

If there was one person in the universe who could understand loss, she was sitting right there.

“My father died five years ago,” he said, the words squeezing like a wolf’s jaw around his throat.

He knew she knew what years were by now. A _varga_ was something like an hour, a year lasted 8760 hours, and Javier Luis Ramírez had died 43 800 _vargas_ ago.

“I know it’s nowhere nearly as recent as your... I mean, it’s just,” he stuttered, unable to meet her eyes.

“Lance,” she said.

“It just hurts,” he finished lamely.

She didn’t speak for a long moment. Lance knew she wouldn’t say anything purposely hurtful, but he still fidgeted under her gaze. She looked away after a while, and when Lance dared to peek at her face again her eyes had a very far-away look to them. “I know,” she said simply, and suddenly tears were swimming in Lance’s vision.

“He taught me how to swim,” he blurted suddenly, feeling like he would implode if something didn’t come out of his mouth immediately. “I was five or six. He took me to the beach and I was… I was so excited. He had a day off, you know, and we stayed out there for hours even though our hands and feet looked like prunes by the end of it,” he laughed a little wetly. “Mom was furious, saying I would get sick from spending so much time in the water, but it never happened.” He sniffed. “Sorry. Talking about him just… helps, sometimes.”

Allura hummed. Lance turned his head to subtly wipe his nose on his sleeve, which was definitively gross but still better than letting his nose run like a faucet in front of alien royalty.

“My father would not let me get a _grumfer_ for the longest time,” Allura said. Lance stilled, trying to process the words. “They’re these scaly creatures with fuzzy tails and bellies, and their eyes are so very big, like gems, and I would not stop talking about getting my own.”

All Lance could picture was an armadillo.

“They’re quite big, however, roughly this high,” she put a hand up to her ear. They were sitting down, so it would’ve been roughly the size of a german shepherd.

A very big armadillo, then.

“He denied me for so long but eventually gave in and offered me one as a surprise. He was so weary of it at first, which was quite hilarious considering that at that time it was still a baby and no bigger than his hand,” she smiled. “My father was this tall, formidable man, and he nearly ran away the first time a _gumfer_ tried to smell him.” When Lance laughed, her grin stretched. “Forward a few quintents, and Volar the _gumfer_ had become something of  a second child to him. He was always checking in on it and scratching its belly, calling it ‘darling’ and whatnot. He grew to love it so very dearly, but I would never let him forget how silly he'd acted in the beginning. It made him _so_ embarrassed."

Lance looked at her serene smile and felt something a little like pride and a lot like healing blossom in his chest.

“You were right,” she said quietly. “It does help.”

 

*******

 

They didn’t really mention it again. In fact, Lance thought Allura had completely forgotten about their conversation until three full months and seventeen days later, the twenty-second of June back home, the day of Jaime’s twenty-fifth birthday, when she called all of them to the bridge and announced, “We are heading for Earth.”

There was for a while nothing but stunned silence.

Then they started talking all at once:

“What the fuck?” Keith and Pidge said in unison.

“Was there an attack?” Shiro asked, frowning.

“I thought we, like, _couldn’t_ go back,” Hunk said, looking at Lance for confirmation. They’d discussed it before. “I thought it would be too dangerous, in case the Galra were following us or something.”

“Yes,” Allura nodded, “which is why now is the best time for us to attempt it. We’ve dealt significant blows to our enemies recently and destroyed a sizable fleet of theirs that had been following us just a few days ago. It is unlikely that another should appear so soon after, but if that were to be the case, I’ve already alerted a number of our allies of our passage. We are deep inside friendly territory.”

“You’ve been planning this,” Lance said numbly. It explained why they’d kept coming back to this specific corner of the universe, to rescue these specific planets and people. She’d been creating alliances within alliances to build this defensible pocket of space, a conglomeration of sorts.

It was far easier to defend yourself when your neighbours were able and willing to lend help, he thought, but he wondered if Allura knew that also painted a much larger target on their backs.

When she looked at him, her eyes seemed to say, _yes_.

“I lost my home,” she said, the heaviness of her words reverberating inside each and every one of them. Lance wondered for the hundredth time how she could bear to stand so tall, how she managed to face the pain and not crumble under its weight every day. “And if I were able to see it again, there is very little I wouldn’t do to be given that chance. As it is, all I can do is remember. But that doesn’t mean you should go through the same thing.”

“It is also good, we believe, for you to remember exactly what you are fighting for,” Coran added.

Lance opened his mouth to correct him, because that didn’t sound quite right, but nothing came out. His thoughts were elsewhere. _He was going back to Earth._

He didn’t notice Keith looking at him oddly out of the corner of his eye, but he did hear him say, “We fight for every innocent soul in the universe being tyrannized, though. Not just Earth.”

Coran’s mustache twitched in what might’ve been approval. “Very good answer, youngling.”

“I’m gonna see my grandma,” Hunk said suddenly, eyes going wide. “Like, for real. _Tae._ ”

“Wait,” Pidge interjected, furrowing their brow. “How the hell are we even going to approach the exosphere without alerting any government, let alone actually land anywhere?”

Allura blinked rapidly. “Pardon?”

 

 

 

 


	2. part two.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know i said this was gonna be a story in two parts but uh...... this boy just makes me go on, and on, and on. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

It often felt that for as long as Lance had been alive, he’d always been looking up at the stars. He still vividly remembered warm summer nights spent in his childhood home’s backyard, eyes reaching for those distant, dying suns, neck tickling against grass blades and body heavy with loose-limbed siblings who mistook him for a cushion. He could remember feeling just how wide and small and untethered the Earth truly was in the grand scheme of things, could remember making up planets revolving around whichever star they’d chosen to focus on that night. Could remember inventing mystical lands with mountains made of crystal and lilac trees as tall as skyscrapers.

Now, standing in front of one of the castle’s viewport and looking down at his small blue speck floating just a heartbeat away, Lance could hardly believe he’d once been that same wide-eyed boy. He’d seen those mountains made of crystal up close, as well as those made of diamond, and coal, and steel, and bone. He’d seen entire alien civilizations and wastelands where others had once stood; seen technology half as ancient as humanity’s and twice as efficient. He’d witnessed a thousand impossible things, had taken part in enough wonders to last him a lifetime or two, and yet.

This was where the compass in his chest was always pointing to.

“Okay, so”, Pidge said loudly as they and Hunk walked onto the bridge, subsequently pulling Lance away from his thoughts. “I’ve found a way for Green to redirect the sensors of the satellites for like, a solid minute. That plus the cloaking shield should let us pass through undetected.”

Lance blinked at them. “Cool,” he said, a little unfocused.  “Does that mean we can, like, go now?”

Hunk walked up to him. He put an arm around Lance’s shoulders and gave him a solid, grouding squeeze. “Yeah, man. We just need the green light from Allura.”

“I’ll go get her,” Pidge offered, and then they were gone.

Lance’s eyes returned to the window of their own accord, but the castle was spinning along the quick orbit of one of Saturn’s moons and Earth was now out of view.

“Hey,” Hunk said softly. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Lance said, then rolled his head down and up again. “No. I don’t know? It doesn’t feel real.”

“Yeah,” Hunk exhaled with his whole body. “Are you worried?”

Lance only gave him a flat look in response, which made Hunk chuckle and squeeze him again. “Yeah, yeah, okay, stupid question.”

“A lot can happen in a year,” Lance mumbled.

“Yeah,” Hunk sighed. “Honestly, I’m really scared I’ll give my grandma a stroke if she like, thinks I went and died, y’know? She might think I’m a ghost.”

Lance snorted. He’d been pulled into various video calls with Hunk’s guardian back at the Garrison. “Your grandma is, like, the chillest person I’ve ever met. If she saw a ghost she’d probably just try to high five it.”

Hunk wrinkled his nose. “My grandma has never high fived anyone in her life, man. I’m not sure she even knows how.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “She'd kindly offer them lunch, them?”

"Now that's more like it."

Pidge chose that moment to walk back onto the bridge with the rest of the team in tow. Keith’s eyes narrowed when he saw Hunk’s arm around Lance, which in turn made Hunk chuckle and whisper something low in Samoan. Lance looked between the two of them in mild confusion, but didn’t get to say anything as Allura walked into the middle of the room and demanded their full attention.

“Paladins,” she said, “as you all must know, Pidge has found a way to land on your home planet unperturbed. We are scheduled to return to our allies within four of your Earth days, but until then I expect you to maintain contact with the castle should an emergency arise.”

Hunk cleared his throat, the arm that’d been on Lance now gone in favour of rubbing the back of his own neck. “That’s cool, but, like... How are we going to do this? Because our families aren’t exactly geographically close, and I think we all want to make the most of our time there, so…”

“I can drop you off wherever you want,” Pidge answered, shrugging, “and when it’s time to go back I’ll just pick you up.”

“It is settled, then,” Allura said, clapping her hands once. “You are free to depart as soon as you wish.” She then gave them all a soft, slightly melancholic smile, and said, “Welcome home, paladins.”

 

*******

 

His grandmother used to say that within every soul lied an ocean, and that tears were mere drops that spilled from the storm raging over it.

One night between a hundred previous ones and a hundred more to come, Lance stared at the unforgiving stars and thought, _I must have dried mine to salt_.

 

*******

 

“Right, so,” Pidge said as they stood in the Green Lion’s cockpit. They all had to bend a little so they didn’t hit their heads on the ceiling, even Keith, but Lance’s head was so full of static energy he could barely register anything past the tingling in his fingertips. His heart sang, _home._ “Passengers, give me your destinations.”

“You can drop me off at Salelologa,” Hunk said. “My grandma’s just a little outside of town.”

“Mom’s just North of Montreal,” Shiro offered.

“Varadero,” Lance said. “Or, well, Santa Marta technically, but it’s right next to it.”

There was a small silence as they all waited for Keith to rattle off a name. When nothing came, they all turned to look at him curiously. He seemed to be caught somewhere between shame, annoyance, discomfort and irritation, his face quickly shifting between all four emotions like it couldn’t decide what to settle on. “Just drop me off in the Mojave,” he mumbled, “I’m sure there’s stuff in the shack I forgot that I could bring back to the castle.”

“Dude, no,” Lance’s mouth said before his brain could catch up. “Just come with me.”

Everyone whipped their heads around to look at him in surprise, but Keith’s expression quickly morphed into one of poorly-concealed anger.

“Keep your goddamn pity to yourself, Lance.”

“It’s not _pity,_ you ass,” Lance said, annoyed now, which was good because annoyance was far easier to focus on than whatever the hell was taking hold of the executive section of his brain at the moment. “But between staying on a beautiful beach convincing my family their middle son isn’t actually dead or, like, going nuts, _and_ staring at a wall in the desert for four days straight, it’s really not that hard of a decision, buddy.”

Keith stared at him for a moment longer, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You’re scared shitless, aren’t you?”

Lance deflated. “Yes, I absolutely am. Now is this settled? Can we go?”

“God, please,” Pidge exhaled, and then they were off.

“You going back to Vancouver, Pidge?” Shiro asked as they pulled away from the castle and made their way towards their home planet.

“Yeah,” they said quietly. “My mom should still be there, but if not then that means she's probably left for Germany already. Her family is in Munich.”

They all stopped talking after that, the cockpit growing very quiet as they quickly neared the exosphere.

Lance’s heart was trying to crawl up his throat. His hands felt too big, his legs too tall, his shoulders too tight and wide all at once. He could see clouds lazily moving across the globe like cotton, could see the endless blue and continents peeking out from beneath it, and felt something primal in his bones awaken in recognition.

“I think that’s the Philippines,” Pidge said quietly. “I’ll go East. Hunk, you’re being dropped off first.”

“Sounds good,” Hunk said a little tightly.

Pidge landed in some woods near Hunk’s grandmother’s house. Fat tears were rolling down his cheeks before he’d even stepped out of the Lion. Lance gave him a tight hug and they all wished him luck, and then Pidge was flying them across the Pacific, to the Caribbean.

He gave Pidge clear directions while trying not to retch from how anxious he felt, and then they were in Varadero and he could make out every street corner and building and _the sea, the sea, his sea_ -

“Lance?” Shiro said, alarmed as Lance suddenly sat down on the floor and rested his forehead against his knees. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Lance mumbled, squeezing his eyes shut. “Just gimme a minute.”

While he fought down a panic attack, Pidge flew them over town and landed somewhere on a patch of land between two resorts.

“We’re here.”

Lance took a deep, steadying breath and allowed himself another second of utter mindless fear before shooting to his feet and nodding at the others without meeting their eyes. “Thanks, Pidge! I’ll see you guys in four days. Have fun!”

He ran out before he could hear anyone’s reply. The warm, humid air hit him like a brick wall the moment he stepped outside, heavy with the smell of rich dirt, greenery and salt.

For one suspended moment in time, he just stood there and took it all in.

In the distance he could see El Quijote facing the Villa Cuba, all of it still standing exactly as he remembered it. The midday sun was high and hot in the sky, and Lance wondered which day of the week it was, wondered about whether or not Clara had work today, and then it really hit him that he could _know_ \- that he was within actual walking distance of them all- they were _right there_ -

“Try not to have an aneurysm,” Keith said suddenly from behind him.

Lance didn’t yelp, but it was a near thing. He’d completely forgotten about his little invitation and had honestly expected Keith to turn him down anyway, but there he was. Glaring at him, familiar as anything, with the treeline and ocean of his childhood behind him.

It startled Lance to realize how grounding the other boy’s presence was, even here. Especially here.

“I sort of wish I’d have one right now just to see what you’d do,” he replied.

“You wouldn’t be able to,” Keith said flatly. “You’d be too busy having an aneurysm.”

Green lifted off then, and they both watched as the Lion melted into the sky like a cat-shaped chameleon.

Keith was squinting at the sun. “So, should we, like…”

“Yeah,” Lance whispered. He cleared his throat and repeated, “yeah. Let’s go.”

They walked for a long while down Avenida Primera until they reached the base of the peninsula, loud and busy with tourists and locals alike. Lance ducked into a more residential street and stayed clear of the main roads so there were less chances of him bumping into someone he knew before seeing his family.

He felt jittery, like there was too much of him for his body to contain, and didn’t realize how quiet he was being until Keith nudged him. Lance looked at him and immediately recognized the frown he was wearing. It was the same one he’d worn after every time Lance had reacquainted himself with the healing pods, the same one he wore when Shiro poorly tried to hide how bad he was really feeling. The worried one.

“Do you even have a plan?” He grumbled.

Lance slowed down to a stop. “A plan,” he mouthed.

Keith gave him a flat look. “Rushing in without thinking is _my_ thing, remember?”

That startled a snort out of Lance. “The fact that you’re self-aware makes it way worse, somehow.”

“Shut up,” Keith said without any heat. “Do you wanna just wing it?”

Lance worked his jaw as he looked at the intersection a block down the street. He only needed to take one right, then a left, and he’d be home. Just like that. Easy as pie.

“I can’t-” Lance started. “I don’t think I could stick to a plan even if we had one. I really don’t know- I’m not sure how they’ll react.”

“Do you have any idea how _you_ will?”

Lance’s heart did a backflip in his chest. He quickly shook his head. “If I even try to think about it I’ll just-”

“Okay,” Keith interrupted. “Okay. Nevermind. Let’s just wing it, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Lance said. “Yeah, okay. I can do this.”

He exhaled loudly and kept walking. They took that right turn, and that left, and then, well. There it was.

The Ramírez household was a humble home in every aspect, but it had always been beautiful in its cosiness. There was something very charming about the chipped green paint, the whitewashed shutters and creaky swing on the front porch; the giant, ancient agave slowly growing on its left side and the carcass of Lance’s grandfather’s car collecting rust and weeds in the backyard like a relic.

“Is that…” he heard Keith say from behind him right as the front door opened and Samuel came out to grab something off the porch swing. He went back inside within a second, not even glancing their way, but it was long enough for Lance’s blood to freeze in his veins.

“Who was it?”

“Older brother,” Lance answered on autopilot. “Sam.”

“Okay,” Keith said. “Okay. Should we go in?”

Lance wanted to agree, but he suddenly found he couldn’t move. He might’ve stayed in the same spot for hours had Keith not suddenly grabbed his arm and dragged him through the metal fence and up the porch steps, visibly reaching the limit of his already short patience.

“Don’t pass out on me,” Keith told Lance, and then he knocked.

 

*******

 

When Lance was six years old, he pedaled down the road on his brother’s bike and misjudged the strength of his momentum as he tried to get onto the sidewalk. The front tire predictably hit the curb and Lance was unceremoniously catapulted off his seat and sent crashing against the asphalt, where he earned himself one long, bloody scrape along his calf and up his knee.

He remembered one of the neighbours calling out his name and asking if he was okay, but he’d been too busy holding back burning tears to answer. He half-limped home with the bike at his side and made it all the way into the kitchen without shedding a single one, but a mere look and word from his mother had him crying, and crying, and crying.

She’d always had that effect on him. For a while there he truly believed that was simply the power of moms, everywhere; that no matter how old you were, no matter how big or strong you became, you could never hide your true self from them, and that their arms were the safest place for anyone to shatter into.

 

*******

 

It felt odd to have the roles reversed. He’d grown into his role of comforter as the years passed, had become accustomed to supporting friends and family when their foundations crumbled. His time as a paladin had only fortified that trait so that it now came to him as naturally as breathing, but his mother had always been the one exception to the rule.

Now, standing in the doorway of his childhood home with her wide brown eyes roaming his face like she couldn’t make sense of his presence, Lance barely knew what to do with his hands. He swallowed the thick lump of distance and longing that’d been stuck in his throat for months and willed his voice to return from where it hid somewhere deep within the catacombs of his chest.

“Hola, mama,” he said thickly.

She didn’t move for what felt like a century. He genuinely thought she might break into hysterics, or yell, or even deny him as a hallucination, but the moment stretched on and she did none of those things. Instead she closed the distance between them slowly, like one wrong movement and he’d vanish again, and carefully raised a hand to his cheek. She paused inches away from his skin, her eyes dancing over his face like shimmering glass, over his nose and mouth and hair and that little scar on his neck that hadn’t been there before. She seemed afraid to touch him and Lance understood her fear perfectly as it was a clear mirror of his own.

“¿Eres real?” She asked quietly, and something in Lance cracked at the tentative hope in her voice. He grabbed her hand and pressed it firmly to his face, nodding through the tears suddenly swimming in his eyes.

“Sí,” he said, and it was like a dam breaking open. He fell into her like he was five years old again, buried his face in her neck and let her wrap herself around him despite the twenty centimeters he had over her. “Sí, lo prometo, estoy aquí. Mama,” he hiccuped, “mama, perdóna-”

“¿Qué pasa?” Someone said from down the hall. Lance lifted his head and met Sam’s eyes over his mother’s shoulder, saw him freeze in shock and drop his phone on the rug.

“Lance?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh man


	3. part three.

Lance had experienced a handful of out-of-body experiences throughout his life, but none that ever came anywhere near close to this one. He was sitting in the same creaky old chair he’d sat in for most of his childhood, socked feet instinctively tucked in behind the wooden bar between its legs, surrounded by people he knew better than he knew himself... and yet. He felt  everything was slightly off, like he was standing in the shadow of his old self and found his body didn’t fit inside its mould quite the same. Like an imposter.

“Cariño,” his mother tugged at him from his right. He looked down at her, at her red-rimmed eyes and shaking smile, at her frizzy braid and sun-kissed cheeks, and thought, _this, if nothing else, will always be the same_. She hadn’t let go of his hand since he’d come through the door, and he squeezed hers tightly.

“Tu-” Sam said from his left. He seemed a little shell-shocked still, alternating between staring at Lance intently and contemplating the floor. “¿Qué te pasó… Dónde…?” He trailed off, unsure where to begin questioning him. He’d barreled at Lance back in the hallway to smother him in a bear hug, but he’d yet to touch him again, perhaps afraid Lance would disappear into dust if he did so.

“¿Quien es este?” Their mother asked, nodding over to where Keith was leaning against the fridge. His arms were tightly crossed and he was glaring at the tiles like they’d personally offended him.

“¿Fue él quien te...?” Sam asked, his face suddenly hardening. He turned to Keith with vitriol in his voice and demanded, teeth bared: “¿Quien diablo eres tú?”

Keith looked up like a deer caught in the headlights. He started uncrossing his arms but aborted at the last second and put them back against his chest, glancing over at Lance with a slight bit of distress in his eyes. “I don’t know what- I mean, uh, no hablo-”

“Who the fuck are you?” Sam repeated in efficient English.

“Cálmate,” Lance interjected with a hand on his arm and a suppressed eyeroll. _Fire, meet gasoline._ “He’s a friend from the Garrison.”

Sam barely spared him a look. He was like a bloodhound on a fresh trail. “Funny that you never mentioned him before now.”  
“It’s, uh… it’s a little complicated.”

“What happened to you, mijo?” His mother asked quietly.

Lance swallowed thickly and looked away. “I… I don’t know how to explain it to you. Not in a way that would make you believe me, anyway.”

“Lance,” she pressed her lips together and rubbed circles over Lance’s knuckles with her thumb. “For a year now I’ve been going to bed at night imagining every single most horrifying scenario possible and waking up from even worse nightmares. But… nothing - _nothing_ has ever felt as worse as the not-knowing, the… the _uncertainty_. Please, baby, tell us.”

Lance shook his head. He swallowed through the thick lump lodged in his throat and blinked back burning tears. “I-I wasn’t hurt, mama. Not like that. I’m so sorry, I don’t… There’s so much to…”

“Lance is helping people,” Keith spoke up. Three heads looked over at him in near-perfect synchronisation. “He’s… he’s saving lives. Every single day. It’s not a safe job, I won’t lie, but it _is_ important. A lot of people rely on him.”

The tips of Lance’s ears suddenly felt very, very warm. “You say that like you’re not doing the exact same thing, man.”

Lance’s mother looked at Keith thoughtfully. “I see,” she hummed. “And what did you say your name was, young man?”

“I’m... I didn’t- I mean, I’m Keith.”

“You taking good care of my boy, Keith?”

Lance hadn’t seen Keith look this uncomfortable since he’d had to explain nuclear weapons to Allura. “I -yeah, I mean, I try. Well, we both- we all take care of each other. We have a team.”

“And this… job of yours,” Sam said slowly. “You help people? How?”

Keith and Lance shared a look.

“There are some… really bad people out there who are… uh, well, they’re taking freedom away from other people. And we’re doing whatever we can to stop them.”

Sam stared at him. “Sounds like war, Lance.”

Lance smiled a little, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I guess it does, doesn’t it?”

“And where _is_ this war happening?” His mother asked, her eyes strangely, impossibly knowing.

“That’s… well, that’s the part I’m not sure how to explain.”

Sam narrowed his eyes suddenly. He pointed a stern finger at his brother and said, “Don’t you fucking say space.”

Lance froze.

“Oh, for the- _claro_.” He threw his hands in the air and slumped against the backrest of his chair. He looked at his mother and gestured at Lance. “Viró loco.”

Lance was psyching himself to dive into a long and tenuous explanation of how Voltron worked and who the Galra were, but then Keith abandoned the fridge he’d been leaning against, reached down for his bayard and suddenly materialized his sword in a brief flash of light.

“This isn’t from Earth,” he said with all the tact of a freight train.

Everyone just stared at him for a moment, and then Lance’s mother was standing up, shaking her head and waving a disapproving finger in the air.

“Okay, no- let’s establish some rules. Rule number one: _no deadly weapons allowed in my kitchen_.”

  


*******

 

When Lance was eight years old, he nearly drowned. His siblings usually talked about it as that time he almost died, but the words felt wrong, too heavy and exaggerated in his mouth. His grandmother referred to it as the day the sea tried to swallow him whole before changing its mind, and Lance like that better, liked how much closer to the truth it sounded, despite the fact that no one knew what the truth was.

The _reality_ was, he should have died. There was no way around it, no reasonable explanation for how he ever made it back alive; Jaime, Sam and Clara had brought him to the cliffs to dive off them on an October afternoon, which had been dangerous in itself, and in spite of the lurking storm on the horizon, which had been stupid. They’d swum and dived and pushed each other into the water for the better part of an hour, and then the waves had suddenly grown wild and the wind had picked up its pace in a second. Sam had called them back to shore, had shouted at them to get out of the water fast, and they’d obeyed, or at least tried to. Clara and Jaime had reached the sand in mere seconds, but Lance had been swimming farther from the shore than any of them, and he’d been the youngest and smallest, and his toes had barely even grazed the ocean floor. He’d been pulled back like an invisible rope had been tied around his waist and some nameless beast at the bottom of the ocean was tugging at it. He’d heard Clara shout at him, fear creeping into her voice a little more with every call of his name, and then the skies had burst open like a dam and he’d disappeared from view.

He didn’t remember much of what happened between then and the next dozen hours save for the feeling of being engulfed, and the crystal-clear memory of his fear and panic dissolving into the water like salt as the storm kept raging on over the surface.

He’d woken up on the shore the following morning to the sound of his name being ripped from his mother’s throat. The sun had been kissing his face from where it hung high up in the clear blue skies, the wind gently blowing sand at his shins, and he’d sat up as though woken from a long nap, squinting at the surreptitiously quiet horizon.

His mother had grounded them all for the three following months with tear tracks still fresh and obvious on her cheeks, but his grandmother had just sat in her armchair as they were lectured over and over, calmly weaving bracelets.

 

*******

 

Later that day as Lance tiptoed downstairs for a glass of juice, he overheard his mother asking her how she could stay so serene in a situation like this, her voice heavy with lingering worry and stress, and his grandmother’s answer, steady as the orbit of the earth, as though she was repeating a well-known law of nature:

“Because I know no matter how far that boy strays, he’ll always find his way home.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was meant to be a one shot


	4. part four.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is self care

Keith had never really travelled much before finding Blue and joining Voltron. He’d made it out of the United States exactly twice, to Canada and Mexico, but neither trip had him straying very far from the border in the first place. He knew he was now arguably one of the most well-traveled people in the galaxy, let alone Earth, but he still felt like he was somewhere deeply foreign as he sat out on the porch stairs and stared out into Lance’s family’s backyard. There was a tree growing strange, scaly fruit by the carcass of an antique blue chevy on one side, and a clothesline heavy with drying laundry on the other. It was all too easy to imagine a younger, chubby-cheeked Lance running across the dry grass, or learning to juggle a soccer ball with his knees, or carefully feeding stray cats, an involuntary kaleidoscope of imagined memories of a childhood he’d only ever heard of spreading throughout his mind.

Keith was more than used to seeing agaves and walking on dry ground, had experience enough sand to last him a lifetime, but everything from the worn steps he was sitting on to the old, creaky chairs on the porch to the faint sound of rapid Spanish coming from inside the house screamed _family_ at him, and he felt wrong-footed amidst it all.

Misplaced, yet again.

The screen door swung open behind him and he turned around just in time to see Lance scrubbing a hand over his forehead. He looked drained, but there was a softness to his movements now, like he’d settled inside his own skin. Keith supposed it came with the familiarity of being somewhere you knew you belonged no matter what.

“Tired?” He asked uselessly.

Lance sighed and sat down on Keith’s left. He laid back against the edge of the porch and rested his elbows on it. “I think Mateo is masterminding a plan to steal my bayard when no one’s looking.”

The rest of Lance’s relatives had quickly arrived and filled the house with teary hugs and sobbing questions after Samuel had left to pick up their sister from work, and Mateo was the second youngest of the cousins. He was only six years old and had been the first to accept and process Lance’s return, but he’d also seemed very taken with the alien technology presented to him.

Keith didn’t know what he was supposed to ask, so he nodded over to the tree and said, “Are you growing dragon eggs in your backyard?”

That startled a laugh out of Lance. “Have you never seen a cherimoya?”

“A what?”

“Cherimoya. They’re good.”

“You can’t convince me they’re not dragon eggs.”

“God, I wish. Can you imagine? That would be _so_ cool.”

Inside the house, Lance’s mom called over his aunt and her voice traveled faintly through the screen door to the two of them.  

“So… how are they holding up?” Keith asked awkwardly.

Lance sighed through a shrug. “I think Sam still believes I’ve gone nuts, but every time he looks at the bayards he gets this constipated look on his face, so he’ll get there eventually. Jaime keeps crying, so I think he’s still in shock. Clara is mad at me. Tía Andrea kept going on about God and clutching her rosary, and Tio Eduardo’s mustache kept twitching like he was trying not to cry so he’s…” He scrunched his nose in uncertainty. “He’s probably happy? Mom is awesome as always, and Mateo is on his way to become a thief. My grandmother is out of town, but she’s coming back tomorrow, and all the extended family wants to come see me next weekend. We won’t be here anymore, though, and I… still haven’t told them that we’re leaving.”

Keith nodded slowly. “And what about y-”

“Lance!”

They both turned to look up at Clara, who was staring down at them from the doorway with a complicated expression on her face. Keith felt Lance tense slightly beside him. “Mamá está haciendo la comida. ¿Es ese chico alérgico a algo?”

Lance looked at Keith. “Uh- do you have any allergies? Mom’s making dinner.”

“Oh, uh - no, don’t worry.”

Clara nodded. She lingered for a moment like she wanted to say something, but ultimately shut her mouth, turned away and disappeared back into the house.

“Shouldn’t you go talk to her?”

Lance shook his head. “No, Clara is - you have to let her come to you. She gets defensive otherwise.”

“Is that… I mean, we’re not staying long.”

Lance huffed irritatedly. “Yeah, Keith, _I’m aware_.”

Lance’s tone immediately stirred Keith’s own irritation. “Yeah, well, waiting for her to come around might not be the _best_ plan on a time-sensitive mission, genius.”

“This isn’t a fucking mission, man, it’s my _family._ I know you have no idea what that’s like, but-” He cut himself off as he realized what he’d said, but Keith was already on his feet, face shutting down like a gate and shoulders becoming a straight line of raw tension.

“Yeah, Lance, I’m fucking _aware._ ” He parroted, and then he was off into the sunset-lit backyard, making a bee-line for the street.

“Keith! Where are you going?” When the other paladin didn’t stop in his stride, he added: “You don’t even know this place! You’ll get lost!”

It was a ridiculous thing to say. All of them had traveled countless unfamiliar planets and always found their way back somehow, and Varadero was hardly a dangerous location by any stretch of the imagination, but the idea of Keith wandering those streets, _his_ streets without him left a bad taste in his mouth. He was about to get up and follow the other boy and tell him - tell him- something, anything - but then someone called his name from the living room and, well. His family had waited on him long enough.

 

*******

 

Keith was lost. He wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone out loud if his life depended on it, but he’d been too frustrated to take notice of any landmark around Lance’s neighbourhood when he’d left. By the time he’d calmed down enough to consider doubling back, the sun had disappeared behind the horizon and he’d looked around and seen nothing but grass and trees. There were a few house littered here and there and the distant shadow of what he thought might be a horse, but the pitch black darkness and lack of street signs had him glaring up at the starry sky in annoyance.

 

He felt jittery. Something about this place made him restless and self-conscious for no discernible reason, and being around Lance’s family only made it worse. He felt like he had something to prove and no tools to do so, let alone any knowledge of what it was he had to prove in the first place, and it was - frustrating.

He stared up and wished he’d stayed on the castleship.

Distantly, he heard waves crashing against shore. With nothing else to do or directions to follow, he decided to chase the noise until he reached the sea. He walked and walked and then sat on the sand when he reached his destination, sweaty and sporting at least ten new mosquito bites. He stared out and the endless black before him,  scattered stars the only visible difference between what was water and what was sky, and exhaled.

Lance was always going on about the ocean and the water and the beach, and although Keith didn’t really hate it, he also didn’t quite get it. It was just - water. A whole lot of it, with underlying currents and slimy creatures and salt. It was nice to be on when it was warm and sunny, he supposed, but Lance had always looked a little enamoured when he talked about it.

He’d never understood it, but sitting here on this empty beach at night with the rhythmic murmur of the waves washing over his troubled mind like a balm, he thought he might be starting to, maybe.

He stayed there for so long he nearly fell asleep to the beach. A shout of his name startled him back into reality, though, and he stared up at the hill where sand gave way to grass and saw a tall shadow looking down at him.

“What the hell, man?” The dark shape demanded. Lance.

“What?”

He made his way down to where Keith was, catapulting his flip flops off his feet as he stomped across the sand. One of them nearly hit Keith in the head. “It’s twenty past midnight.”

“Okay,” Keith blinked.

“No, not fucking okay. Mom was worried.”

Keith looked at him in confusion. “She was- what? Why?”

Lance stopped in front of him and threw his hands in the air. “What do you mean, _why_ ? She made us all dinner and when you didn’t show up I told her you’d stormed off into the night.” He paused meaningfully. “She _pinched_ me.”

Keith didn’t know what he was feeling. “She doesn’t even know me.”

Lance stared at him. In the dark, he looked older, his angular face turning him into a chiaroscuro-heavy painting. “That doesn’t matter, man. She’s still allowed to care.”

Keith looked away, feeling something in his chest tug painfully. “She shouldn’t bother.”

Lance stayed quiet for a while, and then he sighed and flopped down next to Keith. “You make me really sad sometimes, man.”

Keith opened his mouth but Lance interrupted him before he said anything.

“No, I’m not being pitying, you actual two-legged porcupine.”

Keith huffed. “That’s not for you to decide. What you mean and what you sound like are two separate things.”

“Maybe, but you always assume everyone’s sole mission in life is to attack you, so it’s not like you’re the best judge of character for this either.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “You done, Freud?”

Lance punched him in the shoulder. “Don’t you _dare_ compare me to that little rat man.”

“Isn’t he, like, the father of psychology, or something?”

Lance took a deep breath. “First of all, don’t ever say that in front of Clara or she might actually kill you. And second, the only thing he’s the father of is being an absolute _dick_.”

Keith shrugged. “Okay, I guess?”

Lance kept grumbling under his breath about bringing the man back to life only to kill him again, but then he grew quiet and they sat together in companionable silence for a while.

Slowly, Lance’s presence and the crashing noise of waves settled his nerves and he started feeling uncharacteristically relaxed. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the breeze on his face, let it rustle his shirt over his skin and cool his heated skin.

“I had my first kiss over there,” Lance said suddenly. Keith blinked at the random piece of information and followed Lance’s finger pointing at a lit-up building far down the shore on their left.

“That’s the resort Jaime used to work at. I covered a shift for him one evening and - yeah. I always think about it when I’m on the beach at night. Her name was Claudia.”

Keith wasn’t sure what he was supposed to answer to that, so he kept quiet.

“I had my second kiss literally four days later with one of the staff members. I don’t know what was in the air that week, but there were so many new couples and break-ups I could barely keep up with it.”

Keith hummed. He thought the resort looked painfully out of place among the wilderness.“What was her name?”

Lance didn’t answer immediately. When he did, his voice was measured and careful: “His name was Diego.”

Every thought in Keith’s brain suddenly flew out of his head. He gaped at Lance, a little. “You-”

“Yeah.”

Keith opened his mouth and closed it a few times like a fish. Then he took a good look at Lance’s face, recognized the defensiveness there like a mirror, and exhaled. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“What is this, The Fault In Our Stars?”

Now it was Lance who was gaping at him. “Did _you_ just make a reference to pop culture?”

“You don’t have to sound _that_ shocked.”

“Yes, I do! I absolutely do!”

Keith only rolled his eyes in response. He let a moment pass and, before he could second-guess himself, offered: “My first kiss’s name was Eugene.”

He didn’t look at Lance. He kept his eyes stubbornly fixed on the invisible horizon until the silence stretched well into uncomfortable territory and beyond, after which he said, a little defensively, “You’re not allowed to make this awkward after what you just told me.”

When there was no answer, Keith gave in and glanced sideways. Instead of meeting Lance’s wide eyes or frown, he was faced with the back of Lance’s head as the other boy kept his face firmly turned away.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Lance shook his head. “Nothing. That’s cool. That’s - real peachy, buddy.”

“If you have something to say, say it.”

Lance kept his face hidden but said, “Why would anyone still name their kid Eugene in this day and age?”

Keith sighed. “Don’t make fun of people’s names, Spear.”

“Whatever, _Keef._ ”

Keith threw a handful of sand at Lance and relished in his shriek as the tiny rocks got inside his clothes. This also made Lance instinctively turn his way, and Keith stilled as he noticed how warm-cheeked the other boy was despite his darker skin tone.

And Keith… Keith knew he wasn’t always the greatest at reading social cues, but he _was_ good at body language, had been forced to understand it by circumstance if not choice, and something nagged at his mind when he noticed. Something that asked _why_ and whispered _you already know_ in the same breath.

“My second kiss’s name was Nathan,” he said before he could think about it. Lance froze and grew several shades redder, but as he tried to turn away again, Keith grabbed his wrist.

“Keith,” Lance breathed through his nose and stared intently at the ground. “I get it, okay?”

“My third kiss’s name was Victor,” Keith soldiered on.

Lance’s face seemed to be caught in a no man’s land between hope and anger. “Stop fucking playing with-”

“And my fourth kiss’s name-

“Kogane, I swear to-”

“- is going to be yours.”

Lance stilled. He didn’t move for long enough that worry, sinuous and suffocating, started to creep its way into Keith’s chest, but then he looked up and saw wide eyes, clear and full of such raw hope that Keith was helpless to reach out and _touch_. He lifted his other hand to grab the back of Lance’s neck lest he decide to look away again and held on.

Lance tentatively grabbed the hem of his shirt in return, and they stayed like that for another moment, the sea and stars watching over them like silent guardians.

“Well?” Lance whispered unsteadily. “Are we doing this sometime this century, or-”

Keith leaned in and crashed against Lance like the gentle waves before them, smooth and firm, and felt his entire body light up at the small noise it dug out of the other boy. He’d thought about this a truly embarrassing number of times, but no fantasy could’ve prepared him for the real thing. Lance was languid against Keith’s ferociousness in a way that reminded him of melted caramel, opening up like he’d been waiting for this forever, pulling at where Keith was pushing. The hand that wasn’t clinging to Keith’s shirt came up to frame Keith’s face, and then he was laughing, and laughing, and laughing against Keith’s lips.

It was a bubbly, boyish sound, and Keith thought he wouldn’t mind living inside it.

“Something funny?” He murmured instead. When he leaned in to chase Lance’s lips, Lance leaned back with a twinkle in his eyes.

“I’m starting to think the sea _really_ wants me to get laid.”

Keith raised an eyebrow and tried to fight back the smile threatening to unfurl across his own face. “Presumptuous much?”

Lance opened his mouth to say something, but Keith leaned it and sealed their lips again. This time he didn’t bother hiding his grin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> stay tuned for an epilogue!


End file.
